


The Invasion

by morrezela



Category: CW Network RPF, Supernatural RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, F/F, M/M, Tentacles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-13
Updated: 2015-01-13
Packaged: 2018-03-07 08:47:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3168764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morrezela/pseuds/morrezela
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jensen was just finishing up his latest diplomatic assignment when they attack. The thick, tentacle limbs of the Octonians turned out not to be a myth after all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Invasion

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: This isn’t real. The people mentioned belong to themselves. I am receiving no remuneration from this.
> 
> Warnings: Tentacles, dead people and chase scenes
> 
> A/N: This was written for the 2014/15 round of Reverse Big Bang. I was lucky to claim the art of dollarformyname. She is stupendous, and my fic is totally not worthy of her art.  
> Let this be a lesson to you, children. Do not save over your files or you will cry rivers of tears and eat mountains of regret cookies.
> 
> Beta graciously provided by kaelysta. All mistakes you find are my own.

Klaxons did not wake Jensen up. The ship had no flashing emergency lights, no wailing sirens. It was eerily sedate and dark when Jensen opened his eyes, but he knew that he was in danger.

The thump of a body hitting decking was what had jarred him from his rest cycle. Before he had taken his job as Tehrasian Ambassador to the Outer Rings, he had never have dreamed that he would be so familiar with the sounds the bodies make as they fall. But his duties had taken him to dangerous places and places that valued displays of physical power over words or logic.

Tehras valued the body as an extension of the mind. Flesh was meant to be strong and sculpted, but it was a tool for the mind. They waged their wars, what few they had, with cunning and superior weapons. There was no need to bludgeon a sentient being to death or cause their blood and organs to spill across the ground.

But Jensen had learned that not all peoples shared the views of his ancestry. What was odd was that he had been chosen because he was viewed as a rebel to the beliefs of his people. He had been told that he was relatable to others. His strong willed and questioning mind would make other governments more at ease when speaking to him.

Jensen had enjoyed a good deal of success in his position even as he had been horrified by some of the behaviors glorified by other societies. What he had been forced to endure watching had been countered by learning new ways and ideals. He had been able to broker stronger treaties and trade agreements.

There had not been a single failure on Jensen’s record until Lockgrum. At first, he had never thought that his mission would fail. Part of him is still reeling from the fact that it did. 

There had been no hostile tensions to diffuse, nor threats to remove themselves from their trade agreements with Tehras. It was supposed to have been a simple meeting to reaffirm their existing agreements and outline future sharing of technologies.

The assignment had been so insignificant that Jensen had not even met with Lockgrum’s king or heir apparent. The king’s twelfth heir had been the one directed to work with Jensen on renewing the treaty.  
Danneel was the head of a military force that enforced the trade laws both on Lockgrum and in the dedicated space surrounding it. She also shared responsibility for patrolling the neutral space in the Narkham quadrant. 

In her words, “I’m a princess by name only. I’ll never see the throne. I could just live on my family’s money, but what will happen to my children’s children? They’ll be so far removed from the throne that I have to provide them with a legacy. I’m good at weapons, so this is what I do.”

Jensen could understand that. He had worked hard to get to the position he was in. Politics wasn’t an easy field to gain entry to if a person wasn’t born into it. There had been a lot of campaigning mixed with ass kissing to rise through the ranks. He could admire anybody that worked to earn a reputation.

The trades had been going well. Danneel had just signed all of the official documents for the renewal. They had been preparing to send the documents via currier to the king to get his official seal placed on it when the invaders came.

Jensen had heard ghost stories about Octronians. They were the sort of fables told around a mess table by old space sailors who had spent too much time in deep space. Giant tentacle monsters that came for you were so clearly a fable that it was preposterous to entertain the notion of them.

Some would say they moved slowly, a menacing presence ever following you. Others would claim that they moved as fast as whips, wriggling after you like the vilest of serpents. All agreed that they left trails of thick slime behind them and bore enormous suction cups that could suck the breath out of a full grown man.

Jensen had laughed and indulged those who had told him their stories. He had even written some of them down to memorialize them as a piece of important lore that could be forgotten as technologies advanced and sailors died off. There had never been a single moment where he thought that those stories were true.

He regretted that the moment that he saw the massive wave of squirming tentacles approaching him and Danneel. Jensen had immediately known what they were. His mind had flooded with memories about the Octronians, but none of the stories had ever said how to defeat them.

Danneel had not hesitated to pull out her blaster and start firing. They were obviously a threat, and she was a soldier by trade if not by birth. She had yelled for her troops and radioed for assistance, but it was not enough.

The swarm had kept coming, terrifyingly quiet as they came ever closer. Whenever a blast would rip a tentacle off from the body of one of them, the limb would just regrow at a terrifying speed. When the monsters came too close, Danneel had ordered a retreat.

The monsters were massive, so they ducked into small hallways and tunnels built long before the glory days of Lockgrum. It was no use. The creatures were able to compact themselves and squish along after them.

They could be both big and small which meant they could be anywhere. Being able to be anywhere meant that they could be on the ship. Jensen blew out a breath and drew his gun out from under the pillow that he had just been sleeping on. 

He took a deep breath and tried to calm himself, but it didn’t work. There was no way that he could kid himself. Those things were on the ship. He knew it down in his guts. There had been no escape for him, just a delay of the same fate that had met Danneel as they had run for the vessel.

He was going to be snatched up the tentacles, dragged away in a muscular, slime coated prison. Or perhaps he would be crushed to death, ribs snapping in pain as he struggled to breathe. 

Another thud sounded, this one much, much closer than the one before it. Jensen swallowed as his mind unwillingly pulled up the duty roster for the night. It didn’t matter that Kim was lying dead on the stairs that entered his quarters. The whole crew was likely dead. All of his bodyguards and his head of security were either already dead or soon to be.

The sad truth was that Jensen was going to be joining them soon. His fate was going to be inevitable, but he wasn’t going to go out without a literal bang. Jensen slid down the wall so that he was low to the ground. From what he’d seen, the Octronians liked to grab high, snapping the necks of their victims. 

Jensen was going to make as small a target of himself as possible. If he was wrong, well, he was going to die anyway. There wasn’t much he was going to lose by playing a hunch.

With one last, deep inhale, Jensen spun around the edge of the wall, balancing on his knees as he shot up at the writhing mass that was starting to creep down the stairs. It recoiled for a second before starting to advance again, this time moving faster than it had been before.

When it moved, a small gap appeared at the top of the stairs. Jensen kept firing as he ran towards that gap. He did not have a plan. He did not have one of the battle strategies that his people were famous for. All he had was body flush with adrenalin and basic instinct not to allow himself to remain trapped in his quarters. 

His foot slipped as he pushed himself through the opening. The ground under it felt squishy and soft. The slipperiness of it clung as he scrambled forward. He did not need to look to know that he had just walked over a part of the Octronian that was trying to kill him. Taking time to confirm the obvious would only take time away from his running.

The hallways were slick with ooze. Jensen’s bare feet were probably helping him grip the floor, but the feel of the wetness between his toes was disgusting. The creature was following him, keeping pace with his running the same as it had on Lockgrum. He did not have time to stop and catch his breath or even grab another weapon from the dead bodies that were littering the floor.

The only saving grace that Jensen had was that there only appeared to be one Octronian on board. At least, he hadn’t seen another one, which meant that as long as he was being followed, he wasn’t going to be blocked off the next time he turned a corner.

With that in mind, Jensen started taking the shortest route to the escape pods. He didn’t have time to check for other survivors. He could only hope that if there were more, that the creature’s chasing of him would give them time to escape as well. 

The escape pod was a risky choice. There was no guarantee that if the ship was near a planet that the plant would be inhabitable by a humanoid. If there wasn’t a planet to land on, there was no guarantee that Jensen’s distress signal would be picked up in time for a rescue.

Or, Jensen thought, that anybody responding to it would be a rescuer. There was a reason that the Octronians had first attacked Lockgrum and then followed him onto his ship. He was not so naïve as to think that it was just random violence of a giant animal wandering the universe.

No. Either the Octronians were sentient and purposely hunting him, or there was a sentient race controlling their actions. Jensen wasn’t sure which he thought was more likely. Either option was just as confusing to him. He was well apprised of all of the political situations that Tehras was involved in. Even the more delicate ones that he was not a part of did not warrant a mass attack.

Jensen threw himself against the wall where the control panel was located to release the escape pods. The ships systems still hadn’t registered an emergency situation, so he had to input a manual override to get the doors to open. It was time that he didn’t have to waste.

If he got out of the situation alive, he was going to demand some alterations to the systems on ships. He’d start with the suggestion that if most of the crew’s hearts stopped beating that it was an emergency situation. From there he’d move on to demanding they be(are/were?) tentacle creature hostiles. Or perhaps he would just take an early retirement. He could go into farming. 

Jensen turned and fired at the creature again, unloading as many shots as he could to slow it down. His plasmateron level was getting low, but there wasn’t much point to saving ammunition. Finally, he heard the airlock behind him unseal. The doors swished open with a quiet hiss, and he threw himself backwards, not daring to look away from the creature and miss a shot.

His hip jarred against a chair, and his elbow collided with a wall, but Jensen ignored the pain to throw himself over to the control panel so he could smash the ‘close doors’ button repeatedly. Thankfully there was no delay, and the doors swooshed closed just as a large, purple-black tentacle slammed up against them.

Through the transparent metal, he could see it trying to force the doors back open again. Its suction cups gripped at the smooth surface of the pod. The tips of its tentacles tried to wedge themselves in the miniscule gape where the doors touched.

Jensen didn’t hesitate a moment longer to hit the eject system in the pod. He didn’t even bother to strap himself into the chair. Instead he just sat down and took the extra jostling that came with saving himself a second of time. The Octronian clung to the pod as it left the port. It kept wriggling for a second before the negative pressures of space caused it to explode, black slime coating some of the windows. 

 

The slime froze quickly. Thinner patches crystalized into patterns while larger god (got?) sloughed off as the pod spun through space. 

Jensen eventually ran the scan to tell him if there were any planets nearby. He almost sighed in relief when there was an affirmative blip from the computer system. He pressed the key sequence to use the limited fuel of the vessel to get him to the plant and land them. Then he locked himself in and tried to sleep.

~~~~~~~~~

Jensen was woken by the sounds of the pod’s landing systems engaging. He jarred awake just in time to see the expanse of water before he crashed into it. That, at least, was a good sign. Water was a good indicator for an inhabitable planet.

There wasn’t much in the escape pod for survival supplies. Ambassadorial missions weren’t considered high risk like exploratory or military ones. They were supposed to travel known space with limited opportunity for ship abandonment.

There weren’t even clothes in the pod, just a few food rations, a communicator and a scanner. Jensen made sure the communicator was off before he shoved it in the bottom of the travel sack. He had no idea who was behind the attacks on Lockgrum and himself. He wasn’t going to make himself easily trackable. 

With the supplies gathered, Jensen opened the hatch. The capsule instantly began to sink as it filled with water, but Jensen made sure to get away before the pull of it dragged him under water. 

The body of water he was in was fresh, a lake by the look of the shoreline nearby. He started swimming towards the shore as quickly as possible, unsure of who might have seen his crash landing. When he dragged himself out of the water, he saw a camp setup not that far from him. 

Normally, stealing was the last thing on Jensen’s mind, but he was desperate. Even though the shirts had four armholes, he stole one along with a pair of paints that he cinched around his waist with a coil of rope. He took a pair of shoes from a different pack than the one he stole the clothing from. He had the feeling that they were women’s shoes based on the contents of the rest of the bag, but they at least fit well enough that he could walk in them.

Then Jensen hurried away from the camp as quickly as his sore body would let him. He couldn’t know when the owners would be back, but he would bet on sooner rather than later. His landing had to have attracted attention.

The walk to the nearest town was surprisingly short. There was a free transit stop not far from the lake, and nobody paid him any attention when he came on board. There was a mixture of species on board, and Jensen collapsed into a seat with relief. 

It was easy enough to blend into the crowd when he disembarked from the ride. There was no espionage about it. There was just more walking and tired feet. There was also some hiding in allies as Jensen worked his way to the nearest consulate. 

Jensen managed to get it in view when his luck ran out. A large hand wrapped around his mouth from behind while a slim, black tentacle wrapped around his upper thigh, dangerously close to his reproductive organs. He was hauled backwards into a shadowy ally and then a small building.

“Jared!” A woman hissed.

“It has a mind of its own,” Jensen’s abductor complained. 

“Put it away,” the woman ordered.

“I can’t help it,” Jared complained.

A small, angry looking brunette stepped into Jensen’s view. “Never work with horny idiots.”

“I’m not an idiot,” Jared sulked as he took his hand away from Jensen’s mouth. The tentacle did not retract.

“Might want to ditch your passenger,” Jensen rasped. “They’re not really friendly when they get full grown.”

Jensen poked viciously at the thing wrapped around his leg, and to his surprise it retracted almost immediately. Maybe they were less tenacious when young.

“What did you do with Danneel?” The dark haired woman snapped.

“What did I do with her? Maybe you should ask your friend with the tentacle monster what he did with her,” Jensen retorted, pointing an accusing finger in Jared’s direction.

“You were with her when the attack came, yet you miraculously escaped. What. Did. You. Do. With. Her?” the woman pulled out a wicked looking knife and pointed it at him.

“Look, I didn’t do anything to her. She was caught by an Octronian right before she boarded my ship. She’s probably dead if what those things did to my bodyguards is any indication, so whoever is paying you to find her is shit out of luck,” Jensen informed her.

The woman pulled back her blade and stared at him speculatively. “She was taken by them?”

“I don’t think she’s still alive if that is where you’re going with this. They don’t seem like the prisoner taking type, you know? But if you want to go after her, be my guest.” Jensen stood up to leave, but the woman pushed him back down into the chair again.

“Danneel isn’t dead,” she told him.

Jensen did his best not to growl at her. “Whatever it is that you want to think, be my guest. But I’ve been attack two, no three times in as many days. I’ve been covered in slime, chased and abducted. There is only so much that I can take before I lose my diplomatic skills, and I lost that over a day ago. So if you don’t mind…”

The woman pulled out a pendant from around her neck. The stone inside of it glowed a bright purple. “This is Cardiorisite.”

“Lovers rock,” Jensen said, staring at it.

“Danneel has the other one. My heart glows blue, hers red. If she was dead, it wouldn’t be purple anymore,” the woman explained.

Jensen frowned. “We were in negotiations for three months. She never mentioned a wife or even a girlfriend.”

“Because I’m a mercenary,” the woman explained. “It’s not good form to marry somebody like me when you’re in her kind of position. Then again, it’s bad for my reputation to marry somebody of her status, so it’s not like she’s the only one who had something to gain by us hiding our relationship.”

“Look. I’d love to help you. But I’m a diplomat. I can’t even tell you why those things attacked,” Jensen reasoned with her.

“People,” Jared corrected from behind.

“They’re sentient? Well I guess that is one question answered.” Jensen said.

“No,” Jared corrected. “They’re people. They, we got infected.”

Jensen looked over his shoulder to look at Jared. “You’re going to turn into one of those things?”

Jared shrugged. “I don’t think so? I’ve been like this for a year, and the others are already…”

“Giant slime oozing monsters,” Jensen finished for him, “and I still can’t help you.”

“You’re a Tehrasian,” the woman argued. “Your people are skilled at plans.”

“Yeah, and if you need me to broker a trade agreement and shipping lane rights for you, I’ll be all over that. Rescue missions are out of my league.”

“So you’re going to let all of your hard work go up in smoke? They’re already blaming you for causing Danneel’s disappearance. The king refuses to sign the agreements that you and Danneel worked so hard to finish,” the woman slid her dagger back into its sheath as she spoke.

“So I have to go with you to prove my innocence?” Jensen scoffed.

“No,” the woman admitted, “but if you turn yourself in and go through the courts, your name is going to get dragged through the mud. Can your career survive that even if you don’t get convicted?”

Jensen clenched his jaw. “Fine. What sort of information do you have for me?”

~~~~~~~~~~~

“Are you married?” Jared asked as he brought Jensen another cup of coffee. Jensen didn’t know where they had gotten the authentic beans from, and he frankly didn’t care. Caffeine might be an ancient drug, but it was still a good one.

“No,” Jensen said as he looked away from the schematics he had been studying. 

“Away from home too much?” Jared guessed.

“Haven’t found the right person,” Jensen corrected. Jared nodded, and it seemed that would be it with the questions. As much as Jensen was irritated with their initial encounter, Jared was his ally. There was a benefit in getting to know him better.

“How did you get infected?” Jensen asked.

“I was part of a multi-planetary science team,” Jared told him as he moved to perch on the edge of the makeshift desk Jensen was using. “We didn’t know that we were the experiments. The Octronians had died out. Or the virus that caused them had. Either way, somebody decided to bring them back to life.”

“So you know who is behind this?” Jensen asked.  
“No,” Jared told him. “I know the names of some the scientists, the ones who betrayed us. But the actual people at the top? No clue. It would be easier for all of us if I did.”

“So how did you end up here?”

“I escaped. A lot of the others, the experimentation weighed on them, you know? When the opportunity came, I couldn’t get anybody to come with me. They all assumed I’d die trying. I thought dying wouldn’t be worse than what was going to happen to me if I stayed,” Jared mused.

Jared moved to perch on the edge of a nearby crate. “I met Gen at a bar out at Outpost 57. I saved her life, and she took me with her. Said I looked like a big, thuggish bodyguard and she was tired of proving her points with her blades.”

“Do you have any control over it?” Jensen asked.

“Not really. It’s subject to my mood sometimes, maybe my subconscious desires,” Jared explained.

“Subconscious desires?” Jensen echoed.

Jared flushed. “It tries groping people on occasion.”

Jensen smiled. “So it’s a teenager?”

Jared laughed. “Something like that. Most of the time the tentacles don’t feel like they’re a part of me.”

“Maybe because they aren’t,” Jensen said as he turned back to the map splayed out on the pad before him. 

“They’re growing from me,” Jared countered. “That makes them part of me.”

“I might not be the scientist you are,” Jensen said, “but I do know that foreign bodies growing in you aren’t a part of you.”

“Technically, you’re right,” Jared conceded. “But this isn’t like a tumor or a sickness. It’s like it is a part of me now. The tentacles react to what I feel, not just the world around me.”

Jensen bit his bottom lip and turned back to look at Jared. “So they grope people that you want to grope?”

Jared flushed and stood up. “I think Gen is calling me.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
Jensen had created more detailed plans in his time than the one than the one for Gen. But he would normally have more time to research and was under less stress. Learning about military invasions was just an added layer of difficulty.

If it hadn’t been for the near constant supply of coffee that Jared had brought him, Jensen thought that he might have gone insane. It was a near thing as it was. Gen wasn’t exactly the most patient person that Jensen had met, and death glares weren’t the most motivating action he had ever experienced.

If Jared hadn’t been there to calmly usher Gen out of the room each time she stopped by to “encourage” Jensen into working faster, Jensen might have finally snapped and attacked her. He was under no illusion that he would have won that fight. 

As it was, Jensen wasn’t incredibly fond of his plan. He had seen better. He had also made better plans, but he was giving himself a break on that end. There was only so much he could be expected to accomplish with limited resources and a time limit hanging over his head.

“I want to go on record as saying this is a horrendous plan,” Jared said as they looked over the outline.

“This is a brilliant plan,” Gen contradicted him.

“You’re just saying that because you get to stab things a lot,” Jared whined. 

“It’s her strong point,” Jensen said. “Your strong points are different.”

“Tracking you while they hopefully drag you off to the lair where we hope that they’re also keeping Danneel is not a strong point of mine,” Jared hissed.

“You’re good with computers, which is close enough,” Jensen countered. “We don’t have many options when there are only three of us. I’m reasonably sure that they don’t actually want to kill me, but we don’t know what it is that they want from me. So I have to be bait.”

“I don’t like this plan,” Jared sulked.

“Nobody likes the plan, Jared,” Jensen responded.

Gen looked up from polishing her kitanas. “I like the plan. When do we start?”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There was something deeply terrifying about being carried around by a giant, constricting tentacle. Jensen was already planning to spend a month living inside his shower so he could wash the feel of it off his skin.

“Ah, Ambassador Ackles, you gave me quite the chase,” a cocky voice said as Jensen was unceremoniously dropped to the ground in a puddle of mucous. 

“Mark, leave him alone,” Danneel ordered from where she was tied up by the wall.

“No, I don’t think so. Your little agreement that you arranged is quite adverse to my investments. Framing Jensen for your disappearance was just a stopgap measure to keep father from signing those documents. But now that I have both of you, I can simply have you rewrite certain passages,” Mark said as he held out a data pad to Jensen.

“What makes you think I’m going to do that? Even if I did, what makes you think that I won’t revoke it the moment I’m free? The real copy has already been logged. They’ll know if we change it. You need us alive to submit an alteration,” Jensen reasoned.

“Oh, I know. Believe me. I know. But I don’t think that either my dear little sister or you want to spend the rest of your lives as a giant space squid, now do you? And you know that you can’t run from me. Anybody that you tried to send to kill me would either die or turn into one of my minions,” Mark threatened with a disturbing smile on his face.

“I could just kill you now,” Jensen reasoned.

Mark laughed. “You can’t. You don’t have the strength. You have no weapons.”

“No,” came Gen’s voice from above, “but I do.” 

Jensen barely saw the flash of her blade before a spray of Mark’s blood was coating his face and Mark’s dead body was laying before him on the floor.

~~~~~~~~~~~

“I’m just saying it was a bit anticlimactic is all,” Jared reasoned as Jensen packed up the belongings that he had left behind on his original, panicked departure from Lockgrum.

“Not from where I was standing,” Jensen told him.

“Yeah. Okay. But did he really think that his threats and coercion were going to work?”

“Greed is a powerful motivator, but it makes you stupid,” Jensen advised.

“Yeah, well, maybe I just wish there was more to it. All of the horrible things he did, and it was all for some stupid plot about money. And I don’t even know what I’m going to do now because Gen got a pardon because her ‘heroic rescue,’” Jared complained.

“Well, you can always follow me around,” Jensen offered.

“And do what?” Jared asked.

“Well, I need a bodyguard, and I’ve been informed that you’re large and intimidating.”

Jared smiled. “You realize that I’m a trained botanist, right?”

Jensen grinned and clapped him on his arm. “I’ll let you grow plants on the ship.”


End file.
